What is Reddit's opinion of The Primordial Violence?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

> I'm not bothered if people choose to judge my mom for what she did to me when I was a toddler- her 2 kids turned out fine, and that's all the proof anyone needs.

You may be a statistical outlier, those always exist. But the research is clear on the negative effects of spanking and it shouldn't be supported from either a practical or ethical angle.

Out of curiosity, what metrics do you use to judge that you turned out fine?

Also, The Primeordial Violence

> Ok, how do we nicely encourage everyone to start raising their children to be so intelligent and cooperative and selfless?

You're mis-characterizing what I said. Dunno how much you have looked into it but there is a lot of research that correlates child abuse with violent behavior later in life. In order to have a more peaceful society we need fewer predators (sociopaths). In America, parents by and large still hit their young children routinely, on average hundreds of times per year [according to the work of Doctor Murray Straus]I(http://www.amazon.com/The-Primordial-Violence-Psychological-Development/dp/1848729537) and this has a whole host of very negative impacts on people. Raising children without violence won't necessarily make them cooperative, but we can limit the drive to want to screw people over.

>How do we abandon our system of "theft" to ensure that all the people now are mature, giving, big picture, long haul, unemotional types that we can all have perfect faith in?

Again, research what is known about empathy. If you want people to be charitable and help those in need out of compassion instead of threat of violence, you need to help them develop empathy. Again, in America, most parenting is complete shit at this as most parents send their kids to be raised by strangers (daycare) a few months after birth where they cannot get the one on one attention and care necessary for strong emotional development.

Who says everyone has to be giving? or Long haul? We don't WANT unemotional. We want emotional. And perfect faith? Cmon dude. The government is full of complete sociopathic narcissists. You have perfect faith in them to do right by you and legislate for a fair and even society? I highly doubt it. The reason you likely think people need to be like that is because you assume (and i'm assuming here) that society must be such that everyone is responsible and on the hook for the choices of everyone else. Fatal flaw.

>Stealing, hoarding, because they are paranoid batshit thugs and cannot control their compulsions to protect themselves against demons?

Who cares? I mean really, who cares? As long as they aren't harming anyone, let them steal/hoard however they wish. And harm doesn't mean "he has so much wealth while people starve." Harm means actively preventing people from pursuing the means to live. That's very different from a rich person owing a poor person anything.

Spanking is harm. You don't need bruises to harm

>While people could be raised better, you have have not said how an ancap society would achieve this (just that it would need it),

The main method would be a generation or 2 of peaceful parenting. Murray Straus has done fantastic work on looking at the effects on the world of spanking and yelling at children. You can read about it if you like in his book The Primordial Violence. It is amazing the extent to which the way we treat our children mimics the world we live in.

>I find it hard to believe that aggressiveness and willingness to cheat can be fully eliminated,

AnCap doesn't require it to be eliminated. That's why there is still law and courts and defense. It's not some utopia where everyone is magically perfect and nice.

>First off, that video makes the assumption everyone will want the society to work, and not simply take advantage of it, again something I do not believe

Again, doesn't expect everyone to be nice. However, when you can just go off and create your own society because there is no central government to prevent you - if you don't like the system implied in the video, go start your own. The freedom to do so is there.

>Furthermore it neither addresses the concerns that some people will be able to afford better qualities of law enforcement than others, nor issues to do with wider cause and effect, such as pollution.

I did say it was an introduction. You can read Friedman's book if you want to learn more, or you can read some of the seminal libertarian works like Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" which addresses these topics. However, it is naive to think that people get equal justice under our current law system. Rich people avoid jail, while poor people go to jail for victimless crimes because they cannot afford to go to trial and defend themselves. They take plea bargains. How is the quality of police in poor neighborhoods compared to wealthier neighborhoods? Clearly it is not equivalent. So, right now, the government provides unequal services which everyone is forced to pay for. There is no way to opt out and get better service. Governments of today do not solve the problem you are expecting a free society to solve, and that needs to be understood.

>Because it is better than the alternative.

YOU believe it to be better. I don't. Why are you ok with FORCING me to have to accept your notion of "better?"

Here's the thing. You can ask 80 million questions about how X might work without government, but it's entirely irrelevant. If you believe that initiating violence against peaceful people is the wrong thing to do, then you cannot have a central coercive government. Period. It is a moral issue that takes precedence over the outcomes of implementing it. Consider slavery: the abolitionists did not say "we can't free the slaves until we have found every single one of them a job and we've completely figured out how to revamp the cotton industry to be profitable." No. Slavery was a moral evil and getting rid of it was more important than the consequences. That is how some AnCaps feel about using force violence to fund a government. Of course there are consequentialist economics arguments which many Ancaps prefer, because it takes very little research to see just how much government intervention in the market creates virtually every problem people are now asking the government to solve.